The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  I saw my parents’ subtly contoured, keenly alive faces that often dissolved like a glowing, amber liquid into shadows, faces of Renaissance painting. My father had been a mathematics professor and a musical composer. My mother was a pianist and music teacher. Upon liberation, my mother was in such a state of traumatic confusion that we first went to London, then France, then New York, then she could not decide if she felt safer in North or South America, and we ended up in Ushuaia. Her confusion and fear never truly ended, and she was short-lived. As a result, I speak German, French, English and Spanish and could go to America for my undergraduate and doctoral study, where I met Katia. I became a citizen when I began teaching and tried to forget the despair that always shrouded my mother, who was dead by then. Yet now, I thought only of her, the past washing freely around and over my wanderer of a mind, a dark tide I floated upon as dreaming began.

  Then I was swimming in cold black waters off Cape Horn, making no progress, only moving, fighting, moving in a paradox of frigid fever. I awoke with the rough, turgid dream dripping off me and unable to go to the cemetery. The film reel of Bear’s death began to play, and I could barely move around the kitchen and bathroom. I was very hungry, as though I had undergone long, tiring labor. Eating from the casserole dish, I sat looking out my window at the colossus of the lawn and again, an astonishing thing occurred. The ouraka was gone, but a Patagonian black-crowned night heron alighted suddenly upon the wreck.

  This bird haunts the coastlines at night, and its appearance by day this close to humans is again rare. It has a body of angular sharpness yet great elegance and a piercingly long beak. With a stern gullet and wings fluffed forward over the thinnest of legs, it seems to be wearing a judge’s robe. It looks as though it observes the world keenly with repugnance, delegating it the tepid smile of irony, its amazingly long beak able to lance the object of its vision with great precision. When Bear first saw one, she said two words: “Jane Austen.” My eyes were suddenly filled with tears and my heart with pleasure at the thought of Jane Austen and her progeny, alive and well in Patagonia and now multiplying, flying! I stared at the bird until it flew off and realized my memories of Bear and my work might perhaps save me.

  The film reel did not repeat, and I could work hard for the afternoon outside, cutting and soldering the wreck to render it into a horror, and I didn’t need whisky to do it. I worked efficiently, purposefully, angrily. I wanted to both create and destroy, and my material, with effort, began to submit to my desire.

  It was early evening before I felt the suddenness of exhaustion and radiating spikes of pain in my limbs. I looked at the colossus: the wire homunculus was beginning to form on top. I had even created what would become its face to the sky and its mouth-to-be wide open in a triumphant cry. The bottom, composed mainly of its chassis and the car’s frame, would take much more work, perhaps weeks, since I wanted it to suggest a large creature of intrinsic weight and dignity, contrasting with the homunculus. Still, it was more than a beginning and I continued to stare in fascination at this living process that had completely occupied my mind and body for so many hours. Yes, I had been somewhere else, a dimension I had never known before, where anything at all could come into being for the pure wonder of it: speaking in tongues of images; meaning one thing and many; harmonic; reflective; radiant. No wonder Katia had given her life to it: that life was returned, nurturance in an elixir of wonder. Suddenly I was very close to her, sensing her presence distinctly, an emotion I never expected to feel again.

  I went inside and spent the evening hours lost in thought and memory of my life with Katia. There it was in tableau bounded by the new dimension we shared: her startling responses to my work—a mixture of whimsy, acid and insight—the bird that would now always be Jane Austen to me. I remembered telling her about a study I had done on the fighting behavior of rheas, one of Patagonia’s flightless birds. The males lock necks and whirl one another around in circles. The one who becomes too dizzy to continue is the loser. I smiled in remembering her observation that this was very much like American presidential elections.

  I stretched out full length on the sofa, my arm and a pillow beneath my head. There were our trips around Patagonia, the week we spent watching the Magellanic penguins on the coastline of Cabo Virgenes. It is a huge colony of what are often called jackass penguins for their loud braying. Some two hundred thousand males waited, braying, for their females, who were swimming 1,500 miles from Brazil. Their meeting is a truly fantastic altercation, four hundred thousand heads and fins wildly butting one another in joy, the sound a screeching roar that fills the sky. They look as though possessed by seizures. After this comes the laying of eggs and then an equally wild and violent defending of territory little more than the size of a penguin’s bottom.

  I told Bear that Elizabethan sailors believed the birds to be possessed of the souls of their drowned comrades, but she said no, in light of their violent defense of their behinds, they must be possessed by the souls of those who had re-elected Bush. Of course, as she elaborated, their soul-less bodies were still back in the States, torturing prisoners, waging war, polluting the earth, stealing from the impoverished to line wealthy pockets. What better embodiment of such souls than these multitudes of creatures braying before us, having seizures over their tiny bit of earth? And perhaps, as she neatly finished the tale, a suitable afterlife (for which a vision of heaven was a moral impossibility) would be a reunion with these very bodies.

  A stranger and stranger world it was, I thought, the meeting of my beasts and Katia’s imagination, and yet it virtually exploded when the singing nuns arrived. The nuns of Punta Arenas, Sisters of Santa Maria Auxiliadora, take very long weekly bus rides along the coast for the divine purpose of singing ave marias to the penguins. Suddenly, there they were with us, singing alongside the braying penguins and Bear observing that it all fit into a storyteller’s scheme, since the nuns looked so much like the penguins, the cape now a sea of thunderous black and white bodies.

  Yet that was not the end of the exuberantly inspired nuns from Punta Arenas, for we met them again at the Neolithic Cave of the Sloths near Puerto Consuelo singing ave marias to, presumably, the departed souls of the ancient giant sloths who perished there at the hands of early humans. The cave—a disturbing, pungently magnificent mystery—has walls still covered with the orange fur of the sloths and a deep floor of their compressed dung smelling strangely fresh, preserved by the dry, cold, dimly apocalyptic air. The reappearance of the singing nuns brought a smile of delight to Bear’s face; she was almost beatific as she said, “You are right. It is a continent full of monsters!”

  But then, I thought as I lay on my sofa, idling the evening, why was it not a home for you, my love? You, who were so much more excessive, cherished, and rare than my beasts? It was painfully beautiful having Katia in my world of memory, but it ended in tears. My last thought before sleep was that this day was a monster in its own right yet I had not touched a drop of whisky.

  My exhausted sleep was almost instantaneous and then, toward dawn, suddenly turbulent. I was again swimming off Cape Horn, swimming and fighting the black waters, cursing and shouting. Even through the dream, I could sense the enormous exhaustion of my body and mind. In the fluid medium I seemed to make progress, however, and the outline of Cape Horn rose up in the distance. It was the blackened ruin of a thing, the filthy wreck that had lost all coherence, the awful death stone. My teeth were clenching and my mouth curling in rage and then it seemed I could see a strange, pale face upon the rock. Its whiteness stood out clearly, but I could not identify it. It sickened me that a living thing should be there. The chaotic surface rocks would tear its paws. Yet it looked on; silently and premeditatedly, it watched me as though it expected me to reach it and what, save it? I did not know. I fought the water to reach it, fought and howled and woke breathless, full of bright light and horror and strangeness. I hardly recognized myself or my surroundings.

  I did not want to be here in this glowingl
y perfect dawning light, this house I had shared with her, this place I can tolerate in dark and moonlight but not fierce, harsh, clarity in which I am alone, without her, still horribly alive. I shuddered in pain and horror. My first thought was that I was still very ill and weak, not ready for the cemetery at all. I wanted nothing more than to creep into the dark and then, inexplicably and gently, another memory of Katia came to me.

  It was dark in the moonlight over the southern steppes, and we were young, camping out. It was the first time she saw the stars and constellations in the Southern Hemisphere. Beyond the great shadow of the Andes, the flat land was so little present it seemed we could walk through stars that were utterly new to her. We walked far beyond our campsite into the stars as though, she said, we were taking slow, rocking steps into an unknown galaxy.

  Then the sound came, clear as a bell in the wind, which was unusually soft and gentle that night, a musical sound like the beating of tiny anvils by many creatures, full of medleys of chinks and trills. Katia was astonished, wanting to know what it was, and I told her we were walking over the burrows of tuco-tucos. In the morning, I had film footage of them from the infrared cameras I leave around Patagonia: they are night foragers on scrub roots. We had to wait until I could process the images into visible light colors at home. The trip had yielded many such images—maras and even, toward the mountains, clear pictures of the tiny pudu.

  We sat on the very sofa where I now lay sickened, barely able to move, and Katia looked at the faces of tuco-tucos, small rodents with astonishingly orange, prominent front teeth. She laughed and gasped in pleasure at the face of this tiny wonder that had made the sound of anvils and possessed such amazingly huge orange teeth. Then we turned to the mara, another small rodent with such long, slender legs it nearly resembles a deer, and indeed it can gallop twenty-five miles per hour over the steppes. Now we saw it sitting on diminutive legs, eyes large, liquid and expectant, waiting in its small perfection for the world to become a revelation. Again, her breath came fast in pleasure and astonishment.

  We then looked at the smallest deer in the world, the pudu, no bigger than a hare. There it was, the creature that, in its diminutive loveliness, declared the world an ungainly aberration: there it waited in its immense delicacy and refinement. These small faces are vast secrets from the morning of the world, and we treasured them, as was proper.

  The photos now cover my walls, as well as many other photos taken by the automatic cameras and sensors I have left all over Patagonia and then retrieved to view the wide-eyed, peering, tender and graceful beauty of the world in its nativity. But that was the first time she saw them, my beloved, the one to whom I most wanted to show them. What joy it gave me to remember her gasp with wonder, breathe quickly, live. I closed my eyes and a wild horse of love and wonder cantered through my heart, reached every cell of my exhausted mind and limbs.

  Yes, there it was again, the rushing thing of wonder and beauty, the new process that was living in me. I could eat and I did so quickly without thinking and I could walk out into the blazing sunlight and work all day on the sculpture. I did not give another thought to myself: this was reflexive, pure, like my work with my beasts, the shape of my life, what I loved as I loved her. Here we were together. When I finished, looking at the sunset from the top of the chassis, I realized my body was less fatigued, growing in strength. I smiled at the expanse of orange light, the sliver of moon, the clear blue air. Where had I been all day? Here and yet with her. I jumped down from the chassis and noticed that it bore little resemblance to the mess I had towed up the lawn. I could not say it was art, but surely it was other, a strange unity, beginning to speak.

  I went inside and began to prepare my dinner and then walked through the still, empty house, noticing for the first time that it was beginning to show dust and disorder. Well, cleaning would have to wait. Then I was back on the sofa, beginning to accept my solitude. Or perhaps, it was less solitary, for there they were, my beasts, staring from their animal perfection at my human waywardness; and there were my memories and my art touching me at the most painful moments, protecting me in some inexplicable way. How little we understand, either of pain or healing.

  I stared out the window at what was no longer a wreck but a thing in transition beneath the moonlight, and then I quickly sat down again in astonishment: there was a girl out there, moving her hands confidently over the surface of the Thing! I would have to call it a Thing now, for it had truly achieved Thingness and was no longer a wreck. How carefully she touches it, sometimes with her eyes closed, a kind of trained, intelligent touch as though she had knowledge of its entirety, perhaps greater than my own. Now she turns and I can see her face more clearly: it’s the French girl! I’ve seen her many times, mainly as a child living with the French family two streets away. But apparently, I have not noticed her in years. She’s grown up! I must ask her in. I walked rapidly through the house and was thoroughly repelled by its disorder. I surely have no time to clean it now. What can I serve her? Here’s wine and the remains of the casserole.

  I walked out the door and found myself alone with the Thing: she’s gone. She was just here for a moment to spy, typical of Patagonian fauna, after all. How amazing: that the Thing should be drawing the most interesting fauna of Ushuaia to it.

  I went back inside and sat on what was becoming my perch, the sofa. Like the night heron, I need a place from which to contemplate the world. I remember the French girl from occasional glimpses during her childhood—as rough a little hoyden as we let grow wild down here, perhaps somewhat like myself. Now I remember seeing her as a young woman on our main thoroughfare, too, then she vanished—probably to a university in France. It’s December, after all, Christmas vacation in the Northern Hemisphere. I am delighted with the Thing—a healing balm for me, a singular attraction for other animal life. What else will come looking for oddity? I have unleashed something.

  I was both expectant and serene as I dropped off to sleep—again quickly, without alcohol.

  Then the scene smashes to pieces; the shards rearrange themselves into something that reverses my daylight world. Now nothing is new and captivating but horribly familiar—the dark watery dank off Cape Horn. I am stronger now, less overwhelmed. A purpose fills me. I must reach the rock and the white animal that waits for me. I swim and fight the water naturally now: my anger is perfectly channeled. The cape looms up and there, there! is the creature that makes my whole being ache. There is its white face without animal equanimity, intensely intelligent, perhaps desperate. It is hugely, unutterably tragic; one who speaks for all its kind, animal and artist, the one I love.

  I am there beside it. I grasp its massive head that is lowered to me. I touch the wet fur and utter a wordless animal cry, something that means, What are you? What must you tell me? I can stand anything! Tell, show me! I plunge my fingers into the thick, wet fur and hold on until it answers. It begins to roar and I awake, breathless, in the shock of bright sunlight, my heart pounding. I have finished a race through the water but have no idea whether I am the better for it. But at least I reached the rock, touched the animal and cried out to it. I continue to breathe deeply, feel the shock of bright light and the doubly shocking question, What are you? Tell me! But, what am I questioning? I know this creature intuitively. It is intrinsic to my self and my world. I both feel and know it. The question is the latter: What must you tell me?

  That is perhaps little to understand. But, more than understanding has occurred, for I have touched the white, unknown creature. Yes, that is what matters, the touch of it.

  Suddenly I am filled with the most intimate memories of Katia: touching, lovemaking, feeling the pressure of her body, her arms and legs all over me. She was taller and stronger, overwhelming. She seemed the world itself—larger, more powerful, the only one who could tear me away from myself and, like an artist, purely render me into nothing but passionate love. Touching and caressing me is a lean Modigliani body, long and Greek, small-breasted. She gained a great
deal of weight during one of her worst despairs, yet she was still very attractive. Huge, her breasts became full and round, voluptuously moving with an undulant life of their own. I felt hypnotized by a magnificent female animal, a lioness. She almost frightened me, but I loved it. Did I tell her that? No. Yes, there were our bodies pressing, touching everywhere, near desperate. Once we rolled over and over out into the dusty steppe and fell into the stars, the stars a dense, rolling tapestry of light, dark, flesh, and love. I would have been terrified but for that wonderful body I grasped, the only thing I held onto as we fell into the stars. We thought of endless steppes, death, flying, and the unknown.

  Yes, that was when we were young, wild in our love, having orgasms all night until we were unconscious from exhaustion. Women are like that together. She was not the only one for that. She loved me to the limits of my body. Later we made love less frequently, perhaps afraid of that uncontrollable ecstasy, that exhaustion. But still, when the orgasms began, the room vanished. We saw darkness, the steppe, stars, the unknown.

  Yes, she was wonderful as a lover—and terrible, as with everything else. There were times when she became too sensitive to be touched. It could last for days, weeks, even months. It happened when she could not write. Her emotions became so raw and uncontrollable that she had to lie still in the dark. Even sunlight disturbed her. She went to bed at three am and woke up past noon. In Ushuaia, the intense early morning light—cold, endless skies with their ring of mountains big as gods—horrified her.